Water conservation sags in November

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Department of Water Resources Water Resource Engineer John King checks the weight of the snow sample on a scale held by DWR State Climatologist Michael Anderson, left, during the first snow survey of the season Jan. 3 at Phillips Station near Echo Summit, El Dorado County. California water managers said Thursday the Sierra Nevada snowpack is only 67 percent of normal in this winter’s first manual measurement. Winter snow in the Sierra provides drinking water for much of California as it melts in the spring and summer and flows into reservoirs for storage. (Rich Pedroncelli — Associated Press)

Urban water conservation took a sharp drop in November in California, with savings of just 7.8 percent compared to November 2013, the benchmark pre-drought year.

That’s down from 13.4 percent savings in October.

Seventy-nine of the 350 large water agencies reporting to the California Water Resources Control Board indicated actually using more water than in 2013. Another 147 agencies had water savings below 10 percent. Those are unusually large numbers.

Those numbers were reflected locally, with the Chico Division of the California Water Service leading with savings of just 11.1 percent. Cal Water’s Oroville Division saw water use increase 2.9 percent.

The Paradise Irrigation District’s savings were reported as zero, but that number is suspect because most of the district’s customers were burned out for most of the month.

Elsewhere in the north valley, Marysville’s savings were estimated at 14.5 percent, while Red Bluff used 11.5 percent more than in 2013. Willows savings were 6 percent; Yuba City, 5.6 percent.

The water board did not report regional savings by percentage, turning instead to gallons used per person per day.

Statewide, the average was 86 gallons per capita. In the Sacramento River watershed, everyone used on average 101 gallons per day; in the Bay Area, 67 gallons; on the South Coast, 86 gallons.

Oroville did well in per capita use, at 67 gallons a day. For Chico the number was 111 gallons.

Steve Schoonover is the city editor of the Enterprise-Record and Oroville Mercury-Register. A resident of Chico since 1963 and a 1975 graduate of Chico State University, he has been with the E-R since 1980.